The dark side of sexual freedom: American 'zoophiles' take on the language of equality

A high profile assault on a goat has encouraged Florida lawmakers to outlaw bestiality

Last Saturday, the state of Florida finally banned sex with animals. It’s hard to believe that it’s taken so long, but it wasn't a big issue before now. A rash of cases heavily reported in local tabloids convinced the state legislature that something needed to be done. A 54-year-old was arrested in June after his grandson walked into a bedroom and discovered him attempting to mate with the family bulldog. In 2009, a Panhandle man asphyxiated a goat while trying to have sex with it (protestors at his trial wore t-shirts that read “Baaa means no!”) and in 2005 a lonely blind man was caught in flagrante with his guide dog.

Every society has its tragic perverts. What makes this new generation of bestialists different is their political and cultural savvy. They have latched onto the language of “rights” and are trying to identify themselves with other sexual minorities. Michele Bachmann must be overjoyed. This somewhat validates the Christian Right’s prediction that the campaign for gay equality has accidentally opened the door to some far freakier demands.

The push for the normalisaton of bestiality is astonishing for its candour. Animal sex advocate Malcolm Brenner (who is also, predictably, a Wiccan), is republishing a memoir he wrote about a nine-month sexual relationship with a theme park dolphin. Brenner asks, “What is repulsive about a relationship where both partners feel and express love for each other? I know what I'm talking about here because after we made love, the dolphin put her snout on my shoulder, embraced me with her flippers and we stared into each others' eyes for about a minute.”

Like other bestialists, Brenner cleverly adopts the language of minority persecution in defence of his “relationship”. It puts the reader onto a back foot, forcing them to justify their own “prejudice”. Another activist, Cody Beck, compares talking about his attraction to dogs and horses to a gay teenager coming out. Harbouring a crush on a Dachshund is apparently “like being gay in the 1950s. You feel like you have to hide, that if you say it out loud, people will look at you like a freak.” Beck says that he and a network of zoophile or “zoos” are the logical extension of the sexual rights movement. Gay rights campaigners feel very differently; Beck finds that his calls for help go unanswered. He says, “Some gays resent [the comparison with bestialists] because they feel it contributes to the insane 'slippery slope' argument and may interfere with their own efforts." But, he argues, the slippery slope slides both ways: "If you allow zoos to be persecuted, who next? Gays?"

Of course, there is a big difference between gay marriage and zoophilia. But what Beck’s perverse logic illustrates is how the gay rights movement has moved American society to a point where it at least has to consider legalising things like polygamy and bestiality. Take this article by feminist author Victoria Bekiempis in The Guardian. It’s a cogent, intelligent summation of the arguments for and against bestiality. As such, its tone is simply astonishing. At no point does Bekiempis simply write what the sane reader is actually thinking, ie, “People who rape their guide dogs should be flogged within an inch of their lives.” While Bekiempis disagrees with the zoophiles, by taking them so seriously she elevates them.

To be fair, she has to. Anyone who claims victimhood in modern America has to be given a fair hearing and a speech at the Democratic convention. But the bigger problem is that the gay rights movement has muddied the waters of sexual norms by reducing every debate about morals to a question of consent. To quote Bekiempis, “People should be allowed to indulge their weirdest and wildest curiosities and kinks without fear of reprisal – so long as the … gender, sex and number of people involved are being enjoyed by consenting adults in a private setting.” But if consent is our only barometer of legalisation, things get complicated.

As America’s zoophiles point out, animals can sort of consent. Their “community” strictly avoids sexual relations with those that could die as a result (chickens are a no-no) and central to their literature is their assertion that they never initiate sex. Frankly, establishing the parameters of consent among humans can be just as controversial. There are plenty of 15-year-old boys (one year shy of legal consent in the UK) who are sexually mature. They might not be emotionally mature, but there are plenty of 30-year-old men who aren’t either – and society positively encourages their chicanery. Then there are the complexities of alcohol, emotional abuse, drug addiction etc, all of which dim the ability of millions of adults to consent fully to anything. The unmarried English, for example, rarely make love sober (whereas the married English rarely make love).

In her article, Bekiempis does lay out some intellectually compelling arguments as to why animals can never consent in quite the way humans do, but her very engagement with the subject reflects the way in which the normalisation of sex outside of heterosexual marriage has complicated America’s once simple social order. The Christian Right argues that the rather random concept of consent is not a satisfactory way to distinguish what is moral and what is not: it is better to fix our attention to the old Judeo-Christian ideal of marriage, and discuss anything else not in terms of equivalence, but tolerance. Be they right or not, a sexual act that falls so far from the standards of Western civilisation as to end with the asphyxiation of a goat should not be negotiated with. In this author’s opinion, it should lead straight to the electric chair.